


To know a life unchained

by Endrina



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Dogs, Family, Gen, Healing, Loki Redemption, Loki-centric, Making a family of your own, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 22:00:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7379005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Endrina/pseuds/Endrina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are things that Loki wasn't keeping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To know a life unchained

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of an epilogue to  Your very existence is an act of rebellion  but it can be read alone. All you need to know is that Loki escaped asgardian custody and isn't very interested in mayhem and revenge at the moment. 
> 
> There is mention of bad things that happened to children and dogs in the past. I don't believe it is explicit and they get much better, but it is there. Also, Loki hurts people who deserve it, so warning for some violence.

The dog was a mongrel and Loki did not want to keep it. Somehow, it felt like keeping a dog went against the life of a fugitive. Loki knew Heimdall couldn’t see him or they would have come for him already, but that didn’t exclude them from finding him through other means. And they were using every mean available as the nine realms lost their collective minds over his disappearance. It was hilarious.

Still, one should try to no draw attention. Change location and appearance frequently. Erase all traces and create fake ones.

A dog had no place in it.

But she had looked like a monster, with her fur overgrown and matted except for the patches of bare skin red and bitten by a million bugs. She was missing her right eye and Loki could see all her suffering had not come from life on the wild with other animals.

She had been half dead and half mad with thirst, only approaching Loki because he was splashing some water on his face and neck. He did not like heat, which is why he was currently hiding in a desert town somewhere in… Mïrldheim was it?

Loki sympathized with a fellow heat sufferer. She had drank from his hand and then Loki had no option but to go and brutally kill the men that hurt her. He would have loved to send a spell, a shadow that ate their skin and flesh and left only the bones to be bleached by the unforgiving sun. But such a magic display would necessarily draw unwanted attention, so he had to satisfy himself with tearing the leg off a chair and breaking all their bones and setting fire to the place.

If they survived, that would teach them to mistreat a dog.

He found them a hideout with a creek and a little bit of green and high walls of rock that concealed them. Loki discovered that the rock didn’t bother him much as long as there was running water and an open sky. There he sat with the dog between his legs and removed one by one the fleas and ticks gnawing at her skin. He bathed her and cut her fur so that she didn’t look like a pile of rags. He also made an ointment out of the sap of an extremely prickly medicinal plant and applied it on the bare patches of skin

After, she just wouldn’t leave.

“I am a fugitive and a bad person and you can’t come with me” Loki explained, because despite his reputation he didn’t lie as much as people believed. The dog licked his fingers and pushed his hand with her muzzle so it would fall over her head and hopefully scratch her newly visible ears.

Loki did not keep the one eyed bitch. But if she was going to follow him he couldn’t just let her go back to a neglected state, if only for appearances’ sake. It would not do to be followed by an unkempt ugly dog.

No one was going to ask because Loki was in hiding and so there was no one to ask him. But hypothetically, if someone asked, Loki did not have a dog. She was merely following him and the collar was just so she wouldn’t look abandoned and taken somewhere and Loki had to go and get her back.

Just so you know.

 

. . .

 

Loki was most definitely not keeping the girl. The girl could keep herself. The girl needed no one.

She was twelve and had an improbable name after some sort of spirit drink. Loki had met her in an abandoned office building site that looked like a good place to spend the night if you didn’t mind the company of the birds and the cats that had claimed the place. She had looked at him with distrust which just went to show that she had more sense than most.

They had ignored each other and would have kept doing so for the rest of the night if the one eyed dog hadn’t gone to her, tail wagging, to sniff interestedly at the plastic wrapper of a chocolate bar.

(The dog had nine realms worth of smells to learn and was on a mission to sniff all of them).

They exchanged some words and some food, although she wouldn’t take anything from Loki’s hands and only ate packaged food that she had opened herself. Loki had no problem with that, so he passed her his store of potato chips bags (good Midgar discovery, he liked the crunchy sound they made and that his finger were oily afterwards) and let her eat her portion and pass him the bag when it was half empty. It was no dinner but this was not the time to magically bring a proper meal course.

They wouldn’t have said more, happy to go to sleep on their claimed corners (hers a couple of floors above and with two concrete blocks pushed behind the door) and part in the morning. But the mongrel had demanded her to be petted and there was something about burying your fingers in fur that helped confessions. In the same way that ugly truths come easy at night but hide in daylight.

In turned out that she also had a bad father. She had told someone and she had been able to leave her home, a previously unknown Midgar custom that Loki could only approve of. Much like Loki’s own experience with Thanos, the girl had found that the CPS agent (whatever that was) although originally promising and comforting had resulted to be all too similar to what she had left behind. So she had gone, squeezing out of window during the night, with only the things she was able to fit in her _Cars_ backpack.

Loki didn’t understand exactly the source of her pain. Allspeak wasn’t very good with informal language and he felt there was something alluded to and unsaid that he had missed. Nevertheless, he understood enough.

She was younger than him and had no magic, so it felt natural to give her a helping hand. Loki gave her some cash (he rarely had to pay) and a knife, because what kind of woman reached adulthood without knowing how to stab a man, really, Midgar sometimes.

So then he had to give her some lessons because it looked like she would soon part from her fingers the way she was holding the knife. In return she offered some helpful advice on Midgar customs and how gold wasn’t really used as currency anymore (Damned that Barton! He knew nothing of this world).

Loki decided to be truthful because he had been fed too many lies through his life and he would not do the same to the poor girl.

“I am a very bad person and I have killed people” he said.

The girl failed to look surprised. Apparently it was to be expected from brainless rich kids that took pills like skittles; which, again, showed the limitations of the Allspeak because Loki was confused. He had never attempted to eat the Rainbow Bridge nor did he see why anyone would try.

Well, Volstagg maybe.

He tried to clarify. Without going in too much detail and dancing around words like genocide, he made what he considered a fair summarized account of his latest misdemeanors. It was, perhaps, too complex for a twelve year old mind. All she understood was that Loki could kill anyone and had no plan to hurt her and since he had rescued a one eyed dog he couldn’t be that bad.

The girl stayed. Loki didn’t keep her, but they kept each other.

 

 

 

And perhaps Loki very, very, discretely used his magic to track down two men, sneak in their houses and remove certain non-vital parts of their bodies that they obviously didn’t know how to use and were better off without them.

They had to leave the place soon afterwards. Loki was not concerned by the Midgardian police, but it was possible that a retelling of the event reached better informed ears. The girl was happy to go with him although she sulked spectacularly upon discovering that Loki could perform magic and had not started conversation with that fact.

Loki took her to Nirivriemr, to see the purple sea of Uvastar. They played with the dog and lay in the sun and in a moment of absolute genius Loki turned himself into a woman’s figure and the girl’s shoulders unclenched. Then, following the girl’s instructions, he used his newly discovered and undeveloped Jotun’s powers to freeze a jug of milk purchased at the nearest inn and mixed with local berries until they got a paste that the girl called cream of ice and which deserved exhaustive experimentation.

The world was still looking for Loki and he saw now that he may have some stains in his past that he should look about cleaning at some point. The girl had deep scars that would not heal quickly. But tonight, sitting in the white sand and waiting for the sun to sink behind the sea, they knew a life unchained.

 

  …

 

Loki drew the line at keeping Tony Stark.

“And _he_ left too” the man was saying nose buried in a glass of alcohol. “They all leave. Pepper first. I deserved that, but it stills hurts. And now he left too and, and, and Rodney. He didn’t leave, I pushed him away but he stuck around, he fell, can’t leave now, can’t he?”

“I am not sure I follow” said Loki in a tone as dry as his gin. He had no idea how he had brought this conversation over himself, but he thought his current appearance as a thirty something female human had something to do with it. At least at first, when the Man of Iron had attempted a clumsy courtship ritual. Loki had refused him with the sharpest of tones but instead of sending the pathetic human away he seemed to have invited an onslaught of confidences. He had tried to catch the bartender’s eye several times, aware that it was a universal constant that bartenders in all of the nine realms ought to listen to their clients problems rather than dumping them on poor little innocent fugitives. The bartender was nimbly eluding them and Loki was at a loss on how to extract himself of the conversation.

“They all leave” Stark concluded, rubbing his face.

One night. One night for Loki to have some fun and not have to worry about dogs, young little girls, and the manhunt launched after him. He didn’t deserve this.

“And why do they leave?”

They left, mostly, because Tony was a disaster of a person and was aware of it but had no idea how to stop it and everything he did came wrong and maybe he was cursed, he didn’t know, but he ought to check, Jarvis, can you look if oh nevermind Jarvis isn’t anymore, he is there but he changed too because Tony messed up again.

Loki had become accustomed to the girl’s pattern of speech so this part was easier to understand. He looked straight at Stark’s eyes and touched lightly his hair and hands. Perhaps it looked seductive, but it was a mere check for curse deposits.

“You are not cursed” Loki said firmly. He was looking a Stark’s jaw now, the clenched muscle there and in the corner of his eyes. Right, so he wasn’t cursed but he wasn’t right either. In fact, he looked a little bit like Loki had felt when he let go of his fath-, of Odin’s scepter, and plunged into the rift below. There weren’t many things you could say and Loki wasn’t sure he would have listened to any.

“It is okay to let go and fall”. That was Loki’s best advice but Stark scoffed and looked again at his glass.

Loki narrowed his eyes. He could almost see the outline of a monster of cloud and shadow sitting on Stark’s neck, its claws buried deeply on his shoulders.

“No, really” Loki insisted. “You can let yourself fall and have someone else worry for once”. He turned his mouth, frustrated. He could see his words were ineffective and Stark was suddenly thinking about leaving. So much for his silver tongue.  

Loki couldn’t say why it was suddenly so important, but he had to make him understand. Because Stark’s problem wasn’t that he was driving people (and vegetables it seemed) away. He was afraid of something and he was letting that fear govern him.

“Listen, sorry for the imposition” Stark was rising, ready to leave at last. “Thanks for listening, darling, I, uh, I have to”

“Dogs” said Loki. Stark stopped moving, so perhaps he wasn’t completely hopeless. “I have a dog” he went on “little thing. Scared of firecrackers and fireworks. Goes crazy with fear even though it is just light and sound and can’t harm it”.

Stark was a bit pale and there was sweat on his forehead, but he was listening.

“And that crazy little creature will go and bark at a -” Loki couldn’t say minor foches, minor foches were autochthones of another planet. What was a Midgardian animal of similar size? Ah, yes. “A rhinoceros. And it won’t care that it could get trampled because it doesn’t know how to fear properly” finished Loki.

Stark had a disturbed look, but Loki saw the monster sitting on his neck unclench his claws.

 

 …

 

On the deck of a ship in some minor sea in Vanaheim, the girl, the dog, and Loki sat on a crate and looked at the horizon. They were only there so they could go to a lake in the center of a forest where Loki would leave an illusion that would activate in the next full moon. The illusion would then travel south and hopefully be seen by some pirates in the Yellow Sea who would then pass the word to smugglers who often talked to mercenaries and in two to three weeks, four tops, the news would reach one of the warriors of Asgard. Then Loki would be able to sit back and relax while Asgard’s finest looked for him in a wet, hot, mosquito ridden, krakul infested, hell of a place all the while wondering what Loki wanted with the conspicuous jar of honey the illusion would be carrying.

For now Loki sat on the deck, looking like a middle aged slightly fat Garasin merchant, listening intently to the girl’s complex explanation of the composition, development and effects of an arcane organization with hypnotic powers known in Midgard as a “boy-band”. It sounded similar to the Warriors Three arrangement, only the girl claimed that five and not three was the key number.

Wait, had he and Thor been part of a boy band without noticing? Was he the weird one that nobody liked and was only there for symmetry in the dance routines?

Loki was concerned.

The girl assured him this was not the case as he obviously fitted the role of “bad boy” better. She went on to explain that sadly there was always a member who left the group and went on to make his solitary career. After twenty more minutes of this Loki only knew that he was _obviously_ something called zaynmalik to Thor’s harrystyleses and that he felt very sorry for the Lady Sif for having had to suffer the company of a five-components male group. The talk was only interrupted because the dog (good dog!) brought a piece of rope to play with.  

 

 

 

Loki didn’t have a good experience with fathers. The first one let him to die of cold and allowed his kidnapping, just because he was too short sighted to see that Loki’s apparent runt condition hid a veritable power. The second one lied to him and kept him as a prize, eternal second to the trueborn son.

So Loki didn’t relish the idea of becoming one. And the girl had her own negative impressions on fathers and wasn’t in a rush to get a new one.

Tutor, though, was a word with certain charm and elegance. He could be a tutor.

(Although, if asked, the girl would say that if anyone was tutoring someone here it was her. After all she was the one who knew about important things, like money that is not gold and which places where the cool ones to stay).

However, all reflections on this matter were cut short when the dog discovered that snow was a thing you could scratch and roll about and jump and really who had time for reflection on their status in the universe when they had a dog to rescue from a deep snow field.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback loved and welcome.


End file.
